Exercise during pregnancy: Benefits, Safety, Home Exercise and More
Overview
Maintaining a regular exercise routine throughout your pregnancy can help you to stay healthy and feel your best. It can also improve your posture and decrease some common discomforts like backaches and fatigue.
If you were physically active before your pregnancy, you should be able to continue your activity with modifications as necessary.
Is it safe to exercise during pregnancy?
Yes, it is.
Exercise won't increase or lead to any risk of having a miscarriage, a premature baby, and a baby born with low body weight. Instead, exercise will lead to a healthy baby.
Why physical activities during pregnancy are good for you?
Consider these benefits to staying active during pregnancy. You can:
•Feel good as your body changes.
•Promote muscle tone, stamina, and strength.
•Reduce leg and back pain, constipation, swelling, and bloating.
•Promote blood circulation and possibly help in preventing varicose veins.
•Help your posture and balance, which is very important as your center of gravity shifts.
•Sleep better.
•Manage stress.
•Reduce the risk of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes.
•Prepare your body for labor and childbirth.
These activities usually are safe during pregnancy:
1. Walking- Walking is a low-impact exercise that can be done almost anywhere and any time. It is a cardio exercise that makes a muscle stronger and more efficient. Help speed up the digestion time.
Safety tip: Stay safe by choosing smooth surfaces, wearing supportive footwear to prevent falls, and avoiding potholes, rocks, and other obstacles.
Benefits:
1•Reduces the risk of complications during pregnancy and delivery.
2•Boosts your mood and energy levels
3•Eases back pain and other aches. Back pain during pregnancy is common and can often interfere with daily activities and sleep.
2•Swimming- Swimming maintains muscle tone and increases your endurance both will help you when it comes time to push out a baby
Benefits:
•It improves blood circulation.
•It Improves lungs capacity.
•It increases flexibility.
•It decreased inflammation.
Safety tips:
•Use the railing for balance when entering the water to avoid falling.
•Refrain from diving or jumping, which could impact the abdomen.
•Avoid warm pools, steam rooms, hot tubs, and saunas to minimize the risk of overheating.
3. Cycling
It helps build stamina for labor and delivery.
Benefits
•speed up post-natal recovery.
•help increase your energy levels.
•improve blood circulation.
•low impact aerobic exercise,
It can reduce stress and anxiety, boost confidence, increase your ability to relax, help you sleep better, and make you feel delighted by releasing endorphins.
Strength exercise - Strength workouts help maintain and build your muscles. Stronger and more flexible muscles, in turn, help you to bear the weight which is gained throughout your pregnancy and protect your joints from injuries as your ligaments relax.
4. Weight lifting:
Lifting weights is a good way to increase your muscle tone. Use light weights with multiple repetitions instead. And don’t forget to stretch when you're done
Pelvic tilt exercises
In Lying Down
This exercise will strengthen your pelvic floor muscles.
How To Do
•Lay on your back, bend your knees and keep your feet on the floor.
•Move your pelvis forward and press the small gap of your back into the floor.
•Relax your muscles and rest for a few seconds.
•Repeat this a few times till you are comfortable.
Bicep curls
How To Do
•Grab 5- to 10-pound dumbbells curls with your feet slightly wider than your hips and your knees slightly bent.
•Exhale as you slowly bend your elbows, bringing the dumbbells toward your shoulders.
•Inhale and slowly lower the weights back down.
•Take 3 seconds to lift the dumbbells and 5 seconds to lower.
•Do 2 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions
Pelvic floor exercises
Pelvic floor exercises help to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor, which come under great strain in pregnancy and childbirth. This helps to reduce or avoid stress incontinence after pregnancy.
Belly Breathing
How To Do
•It with your legs crossed and lower back supported, hands on your belly.
•Keeping your back and shoulders still, slowly inhale through your nose as you expand your belly.
•As you exhale through your mouth, draw in your abdominals, bringing your navel toward your spine.
Benefits: Strengthens abdominals
Squat Combo
How To Do
•Holding a fixed object, such as a post or a sturdy chair, stand with your feet farther than hip-width apart.
•Lower your body into a deep squat, keeping your weight over your heels. (If your heels do not touch the floor, place a towel under them.)
•Do a Kegel then draw your abs in as you exhale.
•Repeat combo five times.
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